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BIZCHINA / Center
Guangxi looks to ASEAN platform
By Xie Chuanjiao (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-07-24 09:20
Southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has set its sights on
becoming a regional logistics and trading base with the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
It also wants to set up an information exchange center with ASEAN.
"The future development of China-ASEAN regional cooperation should
include Pan-Beibu Bay economic cooperation, the continuing cooperation
with the Mekong River Sub-regional Economic Zone and the construction of
the economic belt from the capital city Nanning to Singapore," Guangxi
Party Secretary Liu Qibao said during a high-level consultative
conference held in Beijing yesterday.
In China's coastal regions, most economic activities are centered in
three economic regions: the Pearl River Delta in the south, the Yangtze
River Delta, and the Bohai Economic Rim in the north.
Compared with these regions, economic activity in Beibu Bay is relatively
backward.
China's 11th Five-Year Plan for Western Development has designated the
Beibu Bay (Guangxi) economic zone as one of three in the west where the
economy will be developed first.
Comprising Nanning, Beihai, Qinzhou and Fangchenggang, the zone has 166
shipping berths with an annual handling capacity of 65 million tons. It
also has the country's first expressway linked to Vietnam, an ASEAN
member.
"If there is another 200 km of railway, Nanning and Singapore could be
linked," Liu said, adding that airports in Nanning and Beihai have
flights to more than 40 Chinese cities and all major Southeast Asian
cities.
"One of the top issues on the agenda is to cooperatively build the
Nanning-Singapore railway and expressways," Liu said.
He also called for the establishment of a bonded port area within the
zone and a comprehensive bonded zone in Guangxi's southwestern Pingxiang
city, China's "South Gate", to the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area.
Liu's proposals were echoed by a number of senior officials at the
conference.
Du Ying, vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission,
said the development of the Pan-Beibu Bay region is also significant to
the import security of key energies.
Chen Qingtai, the former Party secretary of the Development and Research
Center of the State Council, said the zone's development should follow
the experiences and lessons of other developed coastal areas to ensure
its success.
(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)
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